It is completed: Nearly a year in the making – a rebuild and an awesome track by MLJT made especially for this video!

thanks to Franzi, Moritz and Hendrik for helping in this awesome achievement – and thanks to Fedi for all the help in the first run of the project which is unfortunately never going to see the light of day!

The other day I drove an x1 20d BMW for the first time. I was impressed – a SUV that drives like a car and not some shoddy wobbly trampoline with the wind resistance of a barn.

Good power from the 20d engine – good fuel economy for an SUV. Just a litre more than my 320d of diesel, so roundabout 8.2 l/100km. Which considering I got an „you where that speeding maniac that overtook me“ from a colleague is good.

But look at this bloody fuggly interior :

Jeez. I thought stuff like this died in the 70s. The middle console was quite good though, lots of space to put stuff, would prefer it over the layout of the 3 series.

Sometimes random strangers can be very interesting and nice. Sitting in a totally overfilled bullet train going to the south of Germany. Sitting down on a space which will be occupied after the next station.

Next station. Six places in the compartment, two occupied. One of them mine. Wave after wave of new passengers arrive and ask if the middle now unreserves space is available. Yes and no – if nobody arrives and wants my reserved – then yes, if somebody arrives its mine ^_^ ah logic. Classic Schrödinger’s situation. Two outcomes but we don’t which one yet.

Some guy decides to take the risk and sits down on my possible seat. The train fills up and then -alas- somebody has the reservation for the one I am sitting on.

I pack my stuff – ready to leave the compartment and the guy sitting on my theoretical space gets up and actually gives it back to me.

I got quite a few Mercedes as rentals in the last weeks. I really like what they did in the last years from a design aspect. Far more agressive, they dropped all that round and squishiness from their design. I got a GLK, a C 220 CDI, a C 180 CGI and a E 200.

From a driving point of view – veeeery soft. The suspension sometime is like sitting in a boat, nothing compared to the sportiness of BMW. On the Autobahn it’s quite good, the steering gets very stable, which is good during high speeds. which amazed me most with big cars like the E or the GLK was the easiness of steering at low speeds in the city. I’m quite used to manhandling my private 3 series BMW and suddenly having a car which you can turn with your small finger was a very different experience. My girlfriend liked this, tho 😉

And the thing that annoys me most is the electronics and in car media etc. It looks quite nice, especially the cockpit. black and white, very clear. Really thumbs up. I actually prefer this over my own car! but but but…. the electronics… the media interface, the connections…. first of all – no AUX in – at least not without a proprietary connection cable… which is obviously always missing in rental cars… Oh I long for that day, when I am the first person to drive a rental merc… I am so going to steal that cable :)))

Furthermore… to many buttons on the console in the middle… to heavy, to big…. more of the oak desk than the sleek laptop 😉 but then again – it’s a merc ^-^

Last week I installed Jellybean / Android 4.1 on my Galaxy Nexus. While I didn’t notice any major changes at first (cue angry technical rants here) – I was extremly surprised and a bit scared by Google Now. Scared at first because it told me how to get my Hotel I just left – and how long it would take me to get there. I hadn’t checked in, googled it or anything. Google had just tracked me by GPS and found out where I was… While I had Google Now and it’s features on my list – I was surprised that it did all this stuff automatically.

And then – I found this extremly cool – I like the intelligence behindit. not having to do it automatically. It’s a bit like having a trusty butler who reads your mind. I heart technology like this. Big Time.

Now that I have been staying at this hotel for three nights in a row, Google has saved it as my own… The life of a consultant. I wonder what will happen once I travel a bit more, let’s see how I can integrate my travel work plans into google. what will happen. Looking forward!

BBQ – again – today. I’m still experimenting on the whole coal / briquettes thingy. I’m using briquettes at the moment, but am thinking about switching to either normal coal or a mixture of both. I’m just not getting the heat I need. Could be because of a lack of oxygene, because I got the lid closed. The air vents at the bottom are always blocked by ash, also quite quickly again, if I take out the ash. Maybe drill some holes at the side?

I got this awesome BBQ book by T. for my birthday. So – last week I tried something. Bacon wrapped turkey breast filled with rosmarin and chicken stuffing. First time I did a big piece of meat like this on my own.

So first the stuffing onto the turkey:

then wrapped up in the bacon and onto the bbq:

and then waited and waited. the recipe asked for 1 hour to 1 hour 15 minutes. it took me about 2-3 hours because the heat died from the coal. and it took some experimenting until I got the heat back up.

but in the end the meat temperature rose up over 75°c – so it was good to have a try and good it was 🙂 excellent 🙂